He felt sadness, listening to her story. "Life isn't a solitary journey. We all need a support system."
"Says the man who refuses to tell me anything about his childhood."
Blue tensed. "I never, ever talk about it. It's ugly."
"Well then, it's best you don't tell me. I don't know anything about ugly childhoods." Her voice was gentle, but there was a hint of bitterness. The first hint of bitterness he'd heard in her voice.
Was it because she had shared so much with him, and he had shared nothing with her? By accepting her confessions, but not reciprocating, was he stealing one-sided love from her the way everyone else in her life had? Shit. He didn't want to be that guy in her life. But there was no way he could talk about his own past.
He turned around, ignoring it when she tightened her grip on him to try to keep him from facing her. He took her hand, and held it between his, searching her gaze as he faced her. Her eyes were shiny, but she hadn't shed any tears. "You are so unbelievably strong," he said. "I hope you realize what an extraordinary woman you are."
She didn't answer. She just looked at him, those brown eyes of hers so penetrating and full of emotion. "Who got kidnapped when you were a kid, Blue? What happened?"
He stared at her, his customary dismissive answer hovering on the tip of his tongue. He wanted to shove the questions away. He wanted to shove the memories away. He did not fucking want to go there. But for some reason the denial froze inside him. He couldn't shove her away. Just fucking couldn't. "My little brother."
The moment he said those three words he felt like a violent chasm had been cleaved through his soul.
Chloe's eyes widened. "What happened?"
He didn't want to talk about it. He never talked about it. The only time he ever even thought about it was when he went to sleep, and his dreams took control.
Chloe set her hands on his cheeks, forcing him to look at her. "Blue," she said softly. "It's been how many years?"
"Nineteen." His voice was raw and strangled. He could barely get the words out. "It will be twenty years on August seventeenth." God. Twenty years. How had it been so long? It felt like it was yesterday. An hour ago. Like it was happening right now.
"It's still haunting you this much after almost two decades. How is it working out for you, never, ever talking about it? Is that helping you? You feel good?"
A part of him wanted to curse at her, shove her way, and storm out of the room. He wanted to retreat to his cabin, and do push-ups for hours until his arms collapsed from fatigue. He wanted to go back into his coping system that he knew so well, that had held him together for twenty years. Except, the moment he stopped doing push-ups and collapsed into bed, the nightmares would come back with extreme vengeance. He could tell. He always knew when they were going to rip him apart. If he chose the same path, he was going to get the same result.
"Tell me, Blue. You're not going to see me again after you leave here. I'm safe. I know what it's like to have a childhood that isn't so great." She searched his face, her expression one only of concern and empathy. No judgment.
He realized that a part of him wanted to tell her. He wanted to get it out there into the world, into her world. But even as he thought that, he realized that if he told the truth, it would change the way she looked at him forever. He didn't want that. He wanted her to always want to touch him. He needed her to always want to touch him. "I don't want you to see me as I really am. I don't want you to know the truth."
"Did it change the way you looked at me when you found out I had grown up in foster homes? When you found out that no one had ever loved me enough to make me part of their family?" Tears shined in her eyes. "I was so scared it would," she whispered. "For my whole life, people looked at me differently the moment they found out that I grew up in the foster care system. They feel awkward. You can see the sympathy in their eyes, the pity, but also their discomfort, as though they're not sure whether to give me sympathy, or to ask questions, or to pretend they didn't actually hear me say it." She put her hand over his heart. "But not you. You didn't change the way you looked at me. You made it okay for me to tell you the truth. I want to make it okay for you to tell me the truth. Someone has to make it okay for both of us. You were that one for me. I want to be that one for you."
Shocked by the sudden stinging in his eyes, he turned his head away, staring at the wall on the other side of the room as he fought to control his emotions. He didn't look at her. Not even for a second. Not even out of the corner of his eye.
He simply began to talk.
* * *
"I was fourteen. My brother was five." The moment he said it, he was back in that moment, in that day. He could see the color of the sky. It had been bright blue, with only one or two wispy clouds. "It was hot that day. Crazy hot. The kind where the air felt like an oven, sucking the oxygen out of the air, and crushing my lungs each time I tried to take a breath. It was one of the last days of summer. School was starting in a couple weeks, and I was pissed off that my parents had dumped babysitting duties on me for the day when I just wanted to hang out with my friends."
The guilt stabbed hard, so hard that his breath jerked from his body, as if he'd been physically punched. To say the words aloud made it a thousand times worse than every time he thought it. But at the same time, it felt good. It felt good to admit what a selfish bastard he'd been that day. It felt good to feel the guilt and the pain, because he deserved to feel it.
"My friends and I had a pickup baseball game planned on one of the fields at the fairgrounds. It was busy that day, because it was the last day of the fair. There were tons of families around, but my parents were both at work. My brother wanted to go to the fair, and my mom thought that was a great idea." Blue couldn't help but look over at Chloe, even though he didn't want to see the expression on her face.
She was watching him, her eyes so full of emotion that his throat tightened. "Keep going," she said softly. "I'm listening."
Blue took a deep breath. "I told my parents I was going to take him to the fair. They thought I was going to run around on all the rides with him, but I wanted to play ball." He shook his head, unable to keep the disgust out of his voice. "God. I was such a selfish prick."
Chloe set her hand on his arm, her touch drawing him back to the present. "What happened next?"
"I made him sit on the sidelines while we played. He was bored, and I didn't care. I told him I'd take him to the fair afterwards, but I was doing my thing first. The game was tight and I was focusing on it, not on him." Suddenly, his chest seemed to freeze up, and the next words froze in his chest. He tried to clear his throat, but the words were like daggers, searing inside him as he tried to say them. Fuck. He looked at Chloe, helplessly.
She nodded silently. "It's okay," she said gently. "Tell me."
He would never forget that moment, when suddenly he felt like something was wrong. "I was pitching the fifth inning. I was on my second batter, when suddenly it struck me. I realized that Brian wasn't sitting on the bench anymore. I had no idea how long he'd been gone, but I knew right away that something was wrong."
He looked at her, his heart racing, sweat beading on his brow as if he were back in that moment. She smiled and nodded encouragingly, so he continued. "I threw my glove down, and spun around, searching for him. He had to be nearby, right? He was five. Where would he go? But then... God, it was then… That I saw him. Some man had him by the hand and was putting him in a brown sedan. I didn't recognize the man, and suddenly I knew that something was wrong. I sprinted toward them, screaming, running as hard as I could. The man slammed the door shut and raced around to the driver side. Brian was in the front seat eating an ice cream. He had no clue. The man tried to start the car, but the engine wouldn't turn over. I could hear it clanking as I ran, trying to get there, trying to get there in time. I was almost there, screaming at the top of my lungs, trying to make my brother get out of the car, but just as I reached it, the engine turned over. The guy hit the gas, and
the car took off. The last thing I saw was my brother looking out the window at me, confusion on his face, not understanding why I was screaming. And then, they were gone."
Chapter 15
Chloe ached at the depth of pain on Blue's face. His guilt was so stark that she felt as though she could see every fissure of self-torment he'd carved upon his soul since that day. She wanted to reach out and hug him, hold him, or somehow comfort him and take away his pain, but his body was rigid and unaccepting. He was looking past her, at the wall, as if he was replaying that horrible day in his mind, over and over again.
"He was gone for a week. Only a week. It was a week that lasted forever. My parents called in some group that specialized in kidnapping recovery. The cops did nothing. They had no idea what to do. But these guys, these huge, strong, badass guys invaded our house." His voice changed as he talked about the men. It became more steady. It became calmer. "They were so efficient, and so together. And their guns… Shit. I had never seen guns like that. I had never seen men like that. I was sitting there, in the corner, terrified as shit that I was never going to see my little brother again. My parents couldn't even look at me without crying. My grandparents, my aunts and uncles, my cousins, people from the town. Every single one of them was in our house almost constantly for that week, and no one said anything to me. No one knew what to say. Not a single person patted me on the shoulder and said it was okay. No one told me it wasn't my fault."
Chloe couldn't keep her mouth shut anymore. She touched his arm, drawing his gaze back to her. "It wasn't your fault. Your brother was on the bench next to your baseball game. He should have been safe. That man was a predator."
He looked at her, his gaze stark. "If I had been paying attention to him, and holding his hand, and watching him every second, no one could've gotten to him."
"Yes, this is true." She cocked her head, studying him, her heart crying tears of pain for him. "But the truth is, the world is dangerous. You know that. You live that truth in your job today. If you hide from every possible threat, you'll never leave your house again. Your brother wasn't an eighteen-month-old toddler that had no clue how to be safe. Your brother was five, and how far away from you was he? Twenty yards? Maybe a little more?"
Blue looked at her, really looked at her. He shrugged. "Yeah. About that."
"And your whole team was there?"
"Yeah."
"So who on earth would ever have thought he wouldn't be safe there?" She leaned forward, settling her hand around his wrist, pulling him toward her. "You don't understand what I saw when I was a foster kid. You don't understand what I've seen as a social worker. There are people out there that are simply bad people. They're going to do bad things. There's no way to protect against them all. I can't tell you the number of kids I've met in my life that blame themselves for the horrible things that the adults around them do, but the truth is that the kids aren't to blame. We can only hold ourselves accountable for our own actions. If you had handed your brother over to that man without knowing him, then yes, that probably wasn't a great decision. But what you did…"
"I was in charge of him." Blue's voice was hard, like steel. "He got kidnapped when I was supposed to be watching him. There's nothing more to say."
Chloe saw in his eyes that he was absolutely unwilling to let go of the self-blame for what had happened to his brother. She understood that, of course, but at the same time she could see that his soul was disintegrating from two decades of self-torment. "Okay," she said. "Let's say it's appropriate for you to claim responsibility." She didn't miss the flash of pain in his eyes, but she steeled herself to continue. "However, you have spent almost twenty years atoning for that one mistake. You have apologized a hundred million times in your heart. You have risked your life repeatedly to save dozens, hundreds, or thousands of people who were kidnapped. How many do you have to save before you forgive yourself for a mistake you made when you were fourteen?"
He met her gaze. "I don't know how many I have to save. But it hasn't been enough so far. That's why I have to go back into the field. That's why I have to go back to my job. I have to keep going until it's over."
"Until what's over? Where is the end?"
"Until I die. Until there is no one left to rescue. Either one."
She saw then that he was caught in an eternal cycle. The rest of his life would be spent chasing peace that he'd never allow himself to find. "So, if you won't ever stop, why are you in town? Why are you in Birch Crossing?"
He grimaced. "In my last mission, with the partner who replaced Harlan, shit went south. He was shot. I got him to the helicopter, but he died on the way back." His voice was even harder now, so hard that it was like flint.
She didn't need to ask. She knew what the problem was. "Do you think it was your fault?"
His gaze flicked to hers. "I can't sleep since it happened. Seeing him die ripped the shields off my situation with my brother, and I can't fucking recover this time. I dream about Brian every damn night. I'm on edge. Hell, I pulled a gun on you."
Chloe's heart turned over. "What happened to your brother?" she asked gently.
"He was home a week later. My parents had money, so it turned out he'd been targeted on purpose for a ransom, so he wasn't treated that badly. But he had nightmares...hellish nightmares. Wouldn't go anywhere without my mom for a long time. They ended up getting him a German Shepherd. That helped him a lot."
"And now? How is he now?"
Blue shrugged. "I'm not real close to him anymore. Same with my parents. When I turned eighteen, I just left. There wasn't a place for me there anymore."
Chloe's heart turned over at the stark loss he'd suffered. One minute, he'd been a big brother whose biggest concern had been how to balance a baseball game with babysitting. The next minute, he'd lost his family, his sense of self, and his childhood. "How bad was that week he was gone?"
He looked at her. "Beyond words."
"And how good was that moment when those men brought him back?"
He took a deep breath. "Beyond words."
"And you do that. You give that gift back to all the kids and people that go missing." She leaned forward, searching his face. "And you know what else you do?"
He was watching her now, his gaze riveted on her face. "What?"
"You save the people who are blaming themselves for the fact their loved one got kidnapped."
He stared at her.
"For every single person who gets kidnapped," she continued, "there is at least one person lying in bed all night, every night, thinking about all the things he or she could have done differently so their loved one wouldn't have been in that place at that time. That guilt, that torment, that will go on forever...you rescue those people, the ones who are like you, the ones who blame themselves for the abduction. By bringing back their loved one, you save them, too, Blue. Have you ever thought of that?"
He continued to stare at her, but she could see the shock on his face, the stunned awareness of what she'd said. Chloe rose to her knees and framed his face with her hands. "I know you don't see it, Blue, but if the kids in the foster care system had someone like you protecting them, they would all believe that there was a chance that life wouldn't always be that bad. You're hope, hope of a different future, of winning the most important battles, of the worst times coming out okay. Think about how you felt when those men walked into your house when you were fourteen. The hope you felt. That's you. You bring hope every day to the people who need it. You make it possible for them to get through those weeks of agony. Don't you see? You're that sunshine, Blue. You. No one else. You."
He made a low noise in his chest, then his fingers closed around her wrists. "Chloe." His voice was a raw, hoarse whisper, one so broken that her heart seemed to break.
There was so much self-recrimination in his eyes. So much hopelessness in them...but at the same time, she saw the smallest sliver of hope, hope that maybe redemption was possible. She smiled, trying to show him that there was at least
one person in the world who knew the truth, and still believed he was worthy. "You're a good man, Blue." Then she leaned forward and kissed him.
She'd meant for the kiss to be a gentle, nurturing kiss, but the moment her lips touched his, it seemed to unleash something in him. With a low growl, he locked his arms around her and dragged her into his arms, kissing her so deeply that her entire body seemed to ignite.
His kiss was full of pain, of desperation, of a man trying to survive the darkness he carried around with him. She knew, because she carried darkness inside her, as well. It was a different darkness, but one nonetheless. The feel of his body against hers sent shudders through her. It was so intense to feel another living being against her. She spent so much time in isolation, even in the last decade when she was living with Ronald. There was no physical contact with him, and she'd grown up in a world where physical contact was only a negative thing.
To be in the midst of such an emotional experience, teetering on the edge of so many overwhelming memories and images, to have that pain mitigated by the feel of Blue's body against hers, and his lips kissing her so tenderly and so desperately, it was a relief, a safety, an experience she'd never had in her life.
She threw her arms around his neck and kissed him back just as fiercely as he was kissing her. There was so much frantic desperation in their kisses, and in the way their hands clung so tightly. In the back of her mind, she knew that this kiss was no longer simply a kiss. It was two drowning souls struggling to find some way to get back to the surface, finding the first solid ground either one of them had had in so long.
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